I have just taken a break from an email I have been writing to one of the men mentioned in my earlier post. We have had several exchanges where I gave him brief information about the past year and some other things in my life and in all of those exchanges he has ended up sounding like a man with all the attributes I have hoped for my whole life. I have to ask myself if that is so then why am I writing the email I am which will put an end to any further discussions with him or any movement forward to meeting him.

Last night I couldn’t go to sleep. In fact, I lay there simply terrified. My terror comes from the thought of meeting him. It also comes from the realization that I no longer have the desire I once had for a D/s relationship. D/s carries with it the knowledge that I must submit to someone when this past year I have had to submit to cancer and all the doctors wanted me to do. I had no control over my life or my body since the moment I stepped into the doctor’s office and submitted to her examination and then her condescending words when I asked her about the lump in my breast. The words which keep reverberating through my mind are the last few words I heard her speak before I left her office, “You’ll be surprised what you will be willing to do when faced with a diagnosis of cancer.”

She was absolutely and in my opinion unforgivably right.

I have had to face that fact for months and in fact I am still having to face it and will for the rest of my life.

I have had control over my life ever since I walked out my parents door at eighteen and entered the Air Force. When I walked out that door I made a promise to myself that I would never let another person have such control over me ever again. For the past year, I walked through my life like a zombie, taking in some of what the doctors told me while others just flowed over me, and doing everything they told me to do. I followed their protocol giving up control of my life and body and in the end I came close to dying. If I had died I would have died years earlier than if I had done absolutely nothing. If I had continued following their protocol instead of finally stepping up and taking back control of my life and body, I would have ended up dead. The chemo would have killed me. The reaction I had would have killed me.

I know people will tell me I don’t know that for sure but no one but me went through the experience. No one but me felt what it was doing to me. Even my daughter who sat by my side, day in and day out, didn’t know for sure but she saw enough to know she feared sleeping because she didn’t know if she would wake up the next morning to find me dead.

For almost a year now, I have had constant fear in my life and have been looking face to face with death. I am still doing that because with the diagnosis of cancer, even if the doctors feel they have removed it all, even if someone goes through the full chemo treatment, radiation treatments and hormone therapy as they wanted me to do there is no guarantee that cancer will not return. There is no guarantee as to how long a person will live. I have to find a way to learn to live with this.

I have to find a way to make fear my friend because right now it is eating me up. It is sapping my strength. It is taking away my desires and my dreams and my hopes. It is sucking my very life away.

How does this enter into my choice to stop communication with this man or walk away from D/s when I know I am a natural submissive or at least my early life or childhood trained me to be submissive? I took control of my life at eighteen when I walked out of my parents home to begin my life free of their dominating or rather domineering hold and yet they kept hold of me for years and years after that. I lived for years pattering my life after what they had taught me to believe in how I should live and what I should believe in. From as early as I can remember I had to deal with depression. My first glimpse of living without depression was when the man in my last relationship told me I need to let go of my past of trying to live my life the way others expected me to live. I needed to live my life for me. When I did I had a very cathartic breakdown and then I felt unbelievably happy and there was joy in my life.

I enjoy doing things for other people. It makes me feel good when something I do helps another person and they are appreciative of what I have done. But in doing so, I do not relinquish my control in order to do these things. I have often wondered if I could really ever submit to someone and in the weeks prior to the diagnosis of cancer I had been exploring that with a Dom, though we were thousands of miles apart, he gave me rules to follow and I did because they were rules I didn’t mind following. My experience these past months has shown me that if anyone, and I mean anyone, should give me a rule to follow that I do not agree with, then I would ‘walk’, I would fight it tooth and nail and I would walk away and do what I feel I need to do, in my own way, and in my own time. This is because I grew up in an environment which was domineering and silent, and I had no choice. I don’t think I could ever give up that control again. My younger late teen self knew this when I walked out that door to live my life on my own and on my own terms.

So today, I am faced with telling a Dom this very thing even though I am a submissive, if I have a life with a dominant, it will have to be on my terms. What Dom can put up with that?

So now I’m back to square one. I still have my desires for a strong dominant type male however meeting him cannot be forced. It cannot be fearful. It cannot be a Dom meeting a sub. It cannot be with any intent of being anything more than just a man and a woman meeting, having a drink together, exchanging a few words and moving on, to either find ourselves pulled back together again because we find it desirable or to never see each other again. The initial meeting will have to be accidental, a moment of chance, something neither one of us sought out or attempted to manipulate. And most of all, I don’t want to be sitting down and setting up rules or any threat of punishment if I do not do as someone instructs me whether that is in every day life or only in the bedroom. I want a man who will lead while not taking control or without me having to give up control, but we share control, we work together to be what each other needs. I can’t be bothered with worrying whether I put on the wrong socks, or didn’t respond to a text message in the appropriate amount of time or if I leave to run an errand I forgot to tell him. Or if in public he tells me to go to the restroom and remove my panties and I choose not to do what he asks. Or if my life is so messed up I end up neglecting him. Or my fears overrule everything and I can’t cope. I can’t worry if I just don’t have it in me to meet someone new no matter how much they seem to match up to what I’ve always wanted.

What I want is when I’m out and I make eye contact with someone and that spark of interest flares between the two of us, for that person to be confident in who he is to make the initial step to talk to me. To ask me to have a coffee with him even though I don’t drink coffee so we can laugh over the fact I don’t drink coffee but will accept a hot chocolate instead. I want us to gradually discover each other and our desires and work towards being what each other needs without having any preconceived ideas.

For me, knowing that someone is dominant or submissive prior to meeting, brings with it a certain level of expectations. I don’t want those expectations to get in the way of getting to know someone. I don’t want to be thinking this man will be planning to do this or that with me or will want a certain amount of control or my submission. I don’t want to be sitting down and be building some sort of binding contract that tells me what I can and cannot do, or how I should act or not act, or well you probably get it by now. I don’t want to have to worry that if on a random day I wake up and don’t feel particularly submissive that I have to be or suffer punishment.

Does this sound like a D/s relationship? No. It doesn’t. This is what has been going through my mind for days now since this man contacted me. Is D/s really what I want? At first I told him ‘Yes’ even though in the back of my mind I had my doubts because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to think I had been fooling myself over the past few years. Fooling myself into believing I am submissive when I am not. The hard part is, I am submissive, I know this, but I am a submissive who may not be able to submit. I am a submissive who learned to take control of her life and her past has shown her that giving up that control was not healthy.

Once again I find myself, not one thing or the other. I don’t fall into a ‘category’. Doctors try to put me into categories. When I was 42 and pregnant, a doctor tried to put me in the category of a late in life pregnancy and wanted to do all kinds of tests that were dangerous to my unborn child. If I had submitted to those tests, my child could have died or become injured or damaged. In the end, they discovered I didn’t fall into any category, the blood tests reflected that of a younger person in their late twenties to early thirties. Other tests and the final medical records reflected me as falling into even younger categories, while my delivery had me in no-man’s land. I entered into peri-menopause at least 5 years later than most women. The symptoms I exhibited were not the ‘normal’ symptoms most women have. I was at least five to ten years later in the need for bi-focal glasses.

In my opinion categories are very misleading and all too often we try to fit ourselves into one or the other thereby creating expectations that will keep us within those categories. Categories make it easier for others to understand us or at least that is the illusion they present. I am now lumped into the category of a victim of cancer. This is assumed when people first saw me without my hair and the head coverings I wore and even now with my hair still very short and I no longer cover it. This category elicits one of two reactions. The first is the most common, which is no one makes eye contact and says nothing, pretending I don’t exist. The second which is very rare, a question about how I am doing and even rarer, an offer of a hug. The last is welcomed with open arms. The others make me despise categories. I don’t belong in them. I don’t want any expectations from them. I want life to be spontaneous and filled with love and caring and not having to explain to anyone how it is I can love more than one person and yet still be monogamous even though I know I have the potential for a very different and unorthodox love life.

So when I think about meeting a man who contacted me online after having several email exchanges and all this comes bubbling up. I could do nothing else but examine why and what to do about it. Obviously I’m still dealing with the aftermath of the effect of cancer and chemo and making the choice to stop all treatments. I also have to accept how I am feeling about any relationship at this time and the challenges one poses. I am not ready to bring into my life any more change at this time which bring with it challenges I am not ready or willing or have the strength to face.

I have to learn to live again. I have to be willing to want to live. Yes, I did say that. I do admit to it. I have to find a way to wanting more in my life than just the peaceful existence I have with my daughter if I am to welcome anyone else into our lives. I have to be willing to risk allowing another person into our circle. So far I have not reached this point. I am not sure if I ever will.